What is the value of Maker Party to those who want to teach the web?
We recently conducted a survey on Maker Party 2013. We wanted to learn what motivated people to throw Maker Party events, how well we supported them and how we could do better in 2014.
Check out this cool mash up of the feedback in a Popcorn Maker video:
Here are some answers to the first two questions of the survey that were asked in order to understand the value of Maker Party for the people who threw them.
When asked why they threw a party?
“To contribute my part to the thing I love the most “WEB” and to my country by creating awareness about digital literacy.”
“Because, I love the concept of Webmaker project. I am not a hardcore coder, but I love to teach other. Webmaker is the best way for me.”
When asked how they felt after throwing a party?
“I feel awesome as we have reached out to local community or students to help them know how to build something in the web. I felt the urge to spread more this learning and teach the word to more areas.”
“It was a feeling of achievement, even if minute, to have reached a group of youth and shared with them makings of the Internet and WWW. How we use and contribute to Internet and the WWW can profoundly effect national development in a geographically dispersed island nation like ours. To have contributed to the global efforts in creating and shaping the future, even in a tiny way, was extremely fulfilling.”
“I was excited about it, being a Web Developer from past 2 years and not able to share it with others was something I was missing. Maker Party gave me a way to share my knowledge and after the MP, I was astonished by the feedback and somewhere in my mind I said “Now that’s called Fun!””
Maker Party 2014
Maker Party 2013 was a turning point for the Webmaker mentor team and our community but when looking forward we want to understand how we can grow and develop for future years. We are always looking to learn how we can reach more community members and how together we can teach and learn web literacy across the globe. Here are some of the areas we are looking to develop for 2014 and beyond to help grow and support this community:
- The Maker Party global spread can be greater! We want to work on establishing communities that might not have as strong of a presence, while also working with our existing communities to further their development.
- Improve the accessibility of the types of resources people can leverage for their event. Creating a system where we can organize kits or makes based on small/big groups, young/older ages, beginner/experienced levels, online/offline activities, etc. We have kits for every need but let’s make it easier for people to find ones that are most useful.
- Our mentors are inspiring individuals at every event they host. How do we encourage attendees to continue to teach and learn the web, provide them the right resources and track their success?
- Similarly, how do current mentors train a new wave of mentors? Community members have increasingly expressed interest in a scalable version of a Train the Trainers program where they can provide the support and knowledge to those in their area that want to volunteer or run their own workshops but might lack the know-how.
- We need to communicate what we know about why people teach and learn the web in the Maker Party package. We’ve collected a lot of data in the last few months and we want to use it to inspire future party hosts.
Continuous Feedback
We’re still looking to learn more! If you have organized, hosted or participated in an event, we would like your feedback. Fill out this survey to tell us your thoughts on running events and how we can help improve Maker Party for you.